Hi all, I'd like to open this debate here, because IMO this is a big issue. Many packages do this for various reasons, some more legitimate than others, but I think that this shouldn't be allowed, because it basically means that installation fails in a machine without Internet access (which happens e.g. in Linux distro builders for security reasons).
Now, what if connection is suppressed during package load? There are basically three use cases out there: (1) The package requires additional files for the installation (e.g. the source code of an external library) that cannot be bundled into the package due to CRAN restrictions (size). (2) The package requires additional files for using it (e.g., datasets, a JAR...) that cannot be bundled into the package due to CRAN restrictions (size). (3) Other spurious reasons (e.g. the maintainer decided that package load was a good place to check an online service availability, etc.). Again IMO, (3) shouldn't be allowed in any case; (2) should be a separate function that the user actively calls to download the files, and those files should be placed into the user dir, and (3) is the only legitimate use, but then other mechanism should be provided to avoid connections during package load. My proposal to support (3) would be to add a new field in the DESCRIPTION, "Additional_sources", which would be a comma separated list of additional resources to download during R CMD INSTALL. Those sources would be downloaded by R CMD INSTALL if not provided via an option (to support offline installations), and would be placed in a predefined place for the package to find and configure them (via an environment variable or in a predefined subdirectory). This proposal has several advantages. Apart from the obvious one (Internet access during package load can be limited without losing current functionalities), it gives more visibility to the resources that packages are using during the installation phase, and thus makes those installations more reproducible and more secure. Best, -- Iñaki Úcar ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel